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As award season reaches its climax with the Oscars on February 26th, it is impossible to overlook the largely leftist political edge of award acceptance speeches. While the entertainment media industry leans left and would have some criticism of any Republican president, the current president, Donald Trump, differs greatly from a usual Republican. Consequently, celebrities have focused on criticizing the divisive nature of his rhetoric more than usual conservative policies. In her Golden Globe speech lambasting Trump, Meryl Streep most clearly demonstrated this kind of criticism, pointing out that without outsiders and foreigners, [wed] have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.

While criticism like Streeps are direct and rhetorically powerful, it does little more than galvanize the lefts approval and the rights disdain. Streeps message and conservative reactions highlight the redrawing of the culture war. Whereas the old culture wars were fought on matters of religion and sexuality, Trump has redrawn the battle into one of populism and nationalism versus cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism. With the culture wars reset and reignited, the question remains: what is pop cultures role?

Although the fantasy of a post-racial America after Obamas election was quickly dashed, his term oversaw the diversifying of pop culture and the rise of multiculturalism. Voices and narratives from marginalized perspectivesparticularly women and people of colorgained prominence in national discourse. Beyonces proclamation of her feminism as a black woman made her the subject of conversation and admiration. With examples ranging from Steven Universe to Ms Marvel to Transparent, television and comics have also been telling a stories from a wider range of perspectives and identities. While movies were slow to catch up by comparison, this ethos is embraced in films from Moonlight and Hidden Figures to even Mad Max: Fury Road.

This trend towards diversity coincided with the growing value of inclusivity and intersectionality on the political left. As a result, the cultural and political left became more closely entwined, especially due to the Obamas effective use of pop culture as a political platform. This synthesis is perhaps best embodied by Hamilton: An American Musical.The musical quickly garnered national attention for its cast of racially diverse Founding Fathers and hip-hop score. Yet, it let its leftist flag fly with the young, scrappy, and hungry idealism of 2008 Obama and the belief that a strong executive is needed for general prosperity.

This growing inclusion and respect of minority voices was matched by a growing backlash to political correctness. This backlash was first manifested with Gamergate in the summer of 2014. Originally a controversy over ethics in games journalism, Gamergate soon devolved into harassing female game developers and commentators. They were villainized as unwanted invaders whose perspectives politicized and attacked their media, their entertainment, their culture. With its rejection of diversity and its use of social media, Gamergate can be seen as the herald of the alt-right.

Two years later, those who resented the cultural elite and its politically correct hegemony would join those who resented economic and political elites to vote Trump into the presidency. When then VP-elect Mike Pence was addressed by the cast of Hamilton, imploring the Trump administration to heed the worries of the minority communities, Trump claimed that Pence was harassed and demanded that the cast apologize. The war against multicultural pop culture thus began.

With the values represented by Hamilton rejected under Trumpian pop culture, what will pop culture look like? Gamergates premise that culture should be apolitical, while understandable on the surface, is ultimately impossible. Narratives are political because they are drawn from societaland thus, politicalexperience. The desire to be apolitical is really a desire to return to what was not noticeably political: to default to the status quo that is in itself political. A prime example of this is the backlash to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. As the film neared its release, the alt-right charged that it was anti-white propaganda; a politicized defiling of the pure, original trilogy. However, made in a time when fascism was considered morally wrong on principle, the original Star Wars itself was political: its antagonists fascist tendencies were sufficient to demonstrate their villainy.

If art cant be apolitical, then maybe pop culture will now be less focused on racial diversity and return to focusing on white working class protagonists. One narrative regarding Trumps win was that he was supported by the white, working class voters who felt economically abandoned by the elite. Regardless of how accurate this narrative actually is, there have been hints of its resonance in culture. J.D. Vances memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, briefly caught national attention for its depiction of the despair surrounding the collapse of white working class culture. Hell or High Water, a crime thriller rooted in that same despair, is up for several Oscars, including Best Picture.

One could argue that this is for the better. By appealing to minorities through their concerns regarding their race, gender, and other markers of identityhence the term identity politicsone could argue that the left have equated straight white males as oppressors in the process, encouraging them to act and think according to concerns regarding their identity. The white nationalist alt-right, fighting against diversity and white genocide, can be thus seen as identity politics from the right. Should pop culture try to dial down identity politics on the left in the hope that it will matched on the right?

I dont quite think so.

As tactical rallying cries and mere appeals to ones identity, identity politics are a definite cause for concern. Casting Trump supporters as a basket of deplorables without considering their reasons for supporting him not only cuts any attempt at conversation short, but also risks pushing those supporters to more tribalistic extremes. Streeps aforementioned speech falls into this exact trap by casting herself and her audience as cosmopolitan, pro-art heroes and Trump as a nationalist, anti-art villian.

However, striving for diversity and the inclusion of marginalized voices should not be a means to political power, but a universal ideal, monopolized by neither the left nor the right. At its core, diversity reinforces the dignity of all individuals regardless of their race, gender, class, or creedincluding the white working class which has been marginalized over the years. While the technocratic political elite have lost the ability to articulate why core values, such as diversity, are important on a visceral level, art and entertainment retain that ability by emotionally investing us in the lives of the characters on page or on screen regardless of how similar or different we are from them. Rather than rejecting those who feel economically marginalized and therefore are beginning to devalue racial diversity, we must take their perspectives into the fold before it is too late.

This is not to ask that all of pop culture be reduced to condescending fables or leftist drivel. Rather, this is an urgent call for entertainment media to reinforce the value of diversity by presenting subjects of all identities as complex characters rather than simple caricatures, especially in the face of an administration whose rhetoric has stridently otherized minorities and whose policies look to do much worse.

Hansy D. Piou 18, a Crimson editorial writer, is an applied mathematics concentrator living in Quincy House.

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Culture Wars: The Empire Strikes Back - Harvard Crimson

We learned how strong wed become from the force of the opposition that rose against us.

OK, are we going to count the people that come in then, as a blessing or a curse?

These children are among 6,000 of Texas most vulnerable patients whose lives may have been put at risk by the states effort to cut Medicaid costs, their parents say.

I dont think theres any guarantee for the family of the 6-year-old boy.

Despite Horthys WWII-era legacy wearing the medal was not necessarily seen as an endorsement of that leaders anti-Semitic views.

Bild apologizes expressly for the untruthful article and the accusations made in it.

Everybody makes mistakes.

You wont see the KKK charged with domestic terror even though thats what they do.

The status of ethics in an administration tends to reflect the character of the chief executive, regardless of the rules in place at the time.

What was Flynn talking about with the Russians during the campaign?

Here, in convenient list form, are the 30 small questions and three big ones about Donald Trump and Russia.

The American military has failed to publicly disclose potentially thousands of lethal airstrikes conducted over several years in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, a Military Times investigation has revealed.

It is particularly focused on demonizing people who are refugees.

The rally took place at the Canada Christian College, an evangelical institution Id never heard of before.

The [more than 50] bomb threats occurred against a backdrop of rising anti-Semitic hate crimes in the nation and the refusal of President Trump to address the issue or to disavow the anti-Semites who say they are invigorated by his electoral victory.

As is, Mosenkis finds that the districts with the fewest white students are currently shortchanged according to the formula by almost $2,000 per pupil, while the districts with the most white students get about $2,000 more per pupil than what the formula says is their fair share.'

The agents apparently detained the woman Feb. 9 after receiving a tip, possibly from her alleged abuser.

It is one of the most serious examples of governmental misconduct that I have come across in my 40 years of practice.

The future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau continues to remain in question with yet another attack being lobbed at the Bureau this week as [Republican]lawmakers introduced new legislation both in the House and Senate that would abolish the agency.

He had also violated federal regulations around wage theft with his own employees, and threatened to replace workers with machines since, as he put it, theres never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case.'

At the same time that it is Trumps biggest known creditor, Deutsche is in frequent contact with multiple federal regulators.

During Obama, for eight years, I suffered, was unemployed, dependent on my wifes income, he said. Trump got him a job. He is still unemployed now, but he just enrolled in Liberty University to study divinity. Its just a matter of time.

If businesses are forced to pay women the same as male earnings, that means they will have to reduce the pay for the men they employ.

What I call them is, is youre a host.

The Trump administration, it seems, wasnt altogether impressed with the site or its awards.

Youre going to see a lot of love. OK?

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Postcards from the class & culture wars (2.21.17) - Patheos (blog)

She felt that the leadership of the pro-choice movement kept her at arms length.

But she felt that the leadership of the pro-choice movement kept her at arms length. The womens movement was by then an established, PR-conscious network of mainstream organizations that aimed for mass appeal, and they were aware that McCorvey was not an ideal representative. She began to feel at odds with mainstream feminism, rejected for her lesbianism, her class status, her initial lie about being raped, and her past flirtations with drug dealing and occult religions. In photographs from that era, she looks uncomfortable at pro-choice rallies. She slouches and frowns; she is dour-faced and plain in a housedress next to civil rights attorney Gloria Allred, who wears a full face of garish 80s makeup and dramatic shoulder pads.

Women used to come up to me all the time and say, Oh Norma, I want to thank you, if it wasnt for you I wouldnt have finished college, or, If it hadnt been for you, I wouldnt have done this, she said in a 1995 interview with ABC News. And I used to look at them and I envied them, because they got to choose, they had the right to choose. And I never had the right to choose. She never managed to climb out of poverty, either, although the attention brought by the decision garnered her two book deals and many interviews and speaking engagements. She began to feel increasingly embittered towards a feminist movement whose leaders were dramatically wealthier, better educated, and divorced from the cultural milieu of the working-class South. She found herself with less and less in common with those who most loudly claimed her cause.

In 1994, she published her first memoir, I Am Roe. At a book signing, the national director of the anti-abortion extremist group Operation Rescue, the pastor Flip Benham, appeared with a group of protesters, and shouted at McCorvey that she was responsible for the deaths of 33 million children. Benham was based in a suburb of Dallas, and opened Operation Rescues headquarters across the street from the abortion clinic where McCorvey was working. She initially refused to talk to him, but eventually took a liking to Benham, and began going to visit him at the Operation Rescue offices during her smoke breaks. She chided him for being too uptight. What you need is to go to a Beach Boys concert, she once joked. Yes, Miss Norma, he replied, I havent been to a Beach Boys concert since 1976. A friendship was born.

Benham baptized McCorvey in front of network TV cameras in 1995, in a backyard swimming pool in Dallas. She wore overalls. It was a major coup for the pro-life movement, who had now captured a major symbol of their opponents and made her their own. At first glance, it seemed like a fit for McCorvey, too. The brand of Evangelical Christianity that Benham initiated her into prized sinners and converts as signs of Gods forgiveness, and in their hands the more sordid parts of her past became plot points in a story of redemption, not public relations liabilities to be swept under the rug. We want very much for her to be absolutely who God made her, Benham said in a TV interview on the occasion of McCorveys baptism. Its not who we want to be, not what we force on her. She can just be beautifully, supernaturally Norma. The pro-choice movement shrugged. She wasnt one of the leaders of the movement, said Susan Hill of the National Womens Health Organization.

McCorvey spent the rest of her life in pro-life activism, gradually evolving a more anti-choice stance on issues such as rape, incest, and abortions in the first trimester. She published a second memoir, Won by Love, in 1997. McCorvey converted from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism a few months thereafter, claiming that she had heard God tell her to join the Mother Church. In 1996, she had publicly renounced homosexuality as sinful, although she continued to live with Gonzales in Dallas until 2004. She sought out the spotlight, preferring high-profile anti-abortion actions in Washington. In 2009, she dumped a box full of tiny pink plastic fetuses onto a table in the offices of thenHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In 2005, she petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn Roe, claiming standing to sue as one of the original litigants. When Barack Obama ran for re-election in 2012, she campaigned passionately against him. He murders babies, she said.

Norma McCorvey had a ninth-grade education, a drug addiction, and a history of being abused, abandoned, and unloved. It is not difficult to see why she was seen as an enticing mark for both sides of the abortion debate. Her desire for justice was perhaps outweighed by her need to be accepted; the grief she felt for the life she had been denied gave way to a grief for the children she believed had been killed by abortion. Now it is our uneasy task to grieve for her.

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What the Culture Wars Did to Norma McCorvey - New Republic

Thirty years ago, we all understood what the term culture wars meant. It was about Mapplethorpe vs. Helms and teaching old, dead, white men vs. revisionist and black history. There were lines. Whichever side you were on, you knew where you stood.

Alyssa Kibiloski

The battle lines changed and have morphed into something quite different today. As the first efforts by the Trump Administration to enact an immigration ban sputtered in chaos, confusion and a must see TV legal battle, the implications of the fight over how to provide national security have become clear. So, too, did the historical precedents that informed this newest battle.

Whats most interesting is that these new lines mirror the pitched battles over industrialization in the early 19th century, especially in England, as machinery replaced manpower in textile production, especially weaving. The warriors then were craftsmen, rooted in an agricultural society, who saw their traditions and way of life threatened by the mechanization of their livelihoods.

The protesters - the Luddites - were English textile workers and independent craftsmen who destroyed weaving machinery to protest the mechanization of textile production. They were fearful that years spent learning their craft were wasted and that unskilled workers would take their place. Eventually, the military suppressed the Luddite movement. England became the worlds leading industrial power throughout much of the 19th century.

Two hundred years later, the parallels persist as America moved from an industrial to a post-industrial economy. Workers in the manufacturing sector have seen their jobs disappear and wages stagnate as income inequality has continued to rise for over twenty years, despite some recent upticks. The presumed culprit is cheaper overseas labor, principally identified as Mexican and Chinese. The Luddites of 19th century industrial England have become the America first nationalists of 21st century America.

Symbolized by the debate over renegotiating NAFTA and abandoning the Trans Pacific Partnership, it has become a battle to stem the tide over free trade globalization cloaked in concerns about national security. Internally, the battle lines are also cultural, on issues like Planned Parenthood, immigration and refugees, and Supreme Court picks. The philosophies behind these competing claims are decoded into a broader national debate about American values.

For the moment, the effect is to split the country almost uniformly, depending upon the crisis de jour. Practically, there is a political dimension with the red and blue states recast, within limits, as nationalists and globalists, respectively. The problem with the rhetoric today is that people will get hurt. Its probably where the large crowds protesting immigration policies can do the most good, however, especially if they can humanize the negative impact of America first policies.

There is another danger, already recognized in cities like Boston, New York, Seattle, Washington, and San Francisco. These are the eds and meds capitals of the country whose economies are in each case bigger than those of most countries with which America competes. They are the booming economic engines of the US economy.

Its why the Silicon Valleys biggest technology players have joined together to speak against the immigration ban.

To this end, its important to have clear strategic goals in mind. Here are some first thoughts:

Higher Education Must Choose Battles Wisely

Build a strategy out of the initial tactical responses that have occurred in response to the early policy initiatives of the Trump administration. Protests are fine critical, in fact but choose the battles wisely. Americas leading educators should speak out on policies that affect higher education, linking what they say to social, cultural, and political concerns about American values. Their campuses must be prepared to support them, particularly if they focus on the issues and stay out of the politics.

Higher Ed Must Be Broadly Inclusive

Americas colleges and universities must remove what can sometimes be seen as legitimate criticism and become more tolerant of ideas, including those with which they and their college communities disagree. They must practice what they preach on how best to be broadly inclusive.

Higher Ed Must be Leader in Post-Industrial Economy

Its the economy stupid. American workers list job security as their principal worry. In a world in which do no damage should be a primary operating principle, it is dangerous for the American economy to power down, for example, because of knee-jerk immigration policies. We need the best and the brightest with us. But we also need a Manhattan Project version of a Tennessee Valley Authority initiative to move the Rust Belt mindset forward. The goal is a growing economy to build a robust middle class across the country.

America signaled that globalization would undergird the world economy when Bill Clinton signed on to NAFTA.

It will require sane, reasoned debate. Let us begin.

This article was first published on the Edvance Foundation blog.

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Welcome to New Culture Wars. Same as the Old? - Huffington Post

New York Post

Will Team Trump forget to fight the culture wars? New York Post During the Cold War, peaceniks proposed unilateral disarmament: Let the Soviets keep their nukes, we'll get rid of ours. The Cold War is over, but there's another war going on, a culture war being fought over whether there's anything honorable or ...

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Will Team Trump forget to fight the culture wars? - New York Post